Tag: Elessent Clean Technologies

Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Company (AMMC) has awarded Metso Outotec a euro 70 million order for the delivery of two sulphuric acid plants to be built for AMMC’s zinc roasting facility in Almalyk, Uzbekistan. Metso Outotec’s scope of delivery includes the design and delivery of Planet Positive equipment for two gas cleaning and sulphuric acid plants, which will process all off-gases from the zinc roasters into industrial-grade sulphuric acid. In addition, Metso Outotec will deliver utility facilities, such as a common cooling tower system and a common air compressor system.

Safety in sulphuric acid plants is a well-known and widely discussed topic. Industry turnover is a reality, and keeping new employees informed of hydrogen safety procedures is key to keeping plants fully operational and incident free. Walter Weiss of Elessent Clean Technologies discusses the steps facilities need to take to prevent hydrogen incidents.

By recovering waste heat as process steam or electrical energy, technologies are available that can help sulphuric acid plants meet their energy goals. Colin Shore of Elessent Clean Technologies discusses how MECS® HRS™ technology can offer a sustainable solution to enhance sulphuric acid plant performance, while lowering its carbon emissions.

At the end of June a three day strike among workers at Chilean state mining company Codelco paralysed copper output at the world’s largest copper producer. The strike was in protest at the threatened closure of the Ventanas smelter, which was the site of an alleged leak of sulphur dioxide on June 6th. Chile’s environmental regulator subsequently provisional measures for both Codelco and power company AES Chile after numerous people in the nearby towns of Quintero and Puchuncavi in central Chile, including hundreds of high school students and staff, showed signs of sulphur dioxide poisoning. The measures include the installation of a new temperature sensor to measure potential thermal inversions. Both companies have denied responsibility for the leak; Codelco says that its air quality stations recorded normal levels of SO2 during the time of the incident.

Heat recovery systems at sulphuric acid plants have been providing carbon-free energy for decades now and continue to improve. There is also potential to combine the clean power generated at acid plants with hydrogen production from water electrolysis. This could provide the basis for green fertilizer production.

German slurry handling specialist Vogelsang has just launched a new acidification technology which it claims will reduce ammonia emissions from agriculture, reducing up to 70% of ammonia to nutrient rich ammonium. Its new SyreN technology is an onboard sulphuric acid dosing system for tractors that treats slurry or digestate as it is applied to the land. It uses a front-linkage mounted unit to carry the acid, which also improves tractor weight distribution. The acid is dosed when the organic fertiliser is fed to the applicator, with a pH regulator automatically controlling and adjusting the flow. Nitrogen uptake of organic fertilizer is also increased by up to 1/3 as the ammonium is more easily metabolised by the soil. Results from a study in Germany showed that the acidifying slurry increased crop yield by up to 20%. The sulphur contained in the acid also becomes available to the plants as sulphate after spreading, eliminating the need for an additional pass over the field to administer a supplementary sulphur fertiliser, such as ammonium sulphate nitrate. At approximately 30 kg/ha, the amount of sulphur introduced into the crop with the SyreN system corresponds to the average amount of sulphur that is already applied to crops in the course of a growing season.

Yara and Lantmännen have signed an agreement to bring fossil-free mineral fertilizers to market.

DuPont has agreed to sell its Clean Technologies business for $510 million to an international private equity consortium, comprising BroadPeak Global, Asia Green Fund and The Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Company (Dussur). The new, independent company has been named Elessent Clean Technologies and will be a global leader in process technologies to drive sustainability and carbon neutrality in the metal, fertilizer, chemical and oil refining industries. Elessent retains exclusive rights to the technologies, expertise, products, and services including: MECS® sulphuric acid and environmental technologies, BELCO® scrubbing technologies, STRATCO® alkylation technology and IsoTherming® hydroprocessing technology. Derived from the words “element” and “essential,” Elessent says that it will help customers produce, optimise or separate essential elements every day, creating clean alternatives to traditional industrial processes to minimise the impact on the environment while enabling our customers to produce essential elements critical to everyday life.